DAVENPORT — In the shadows of the recent four-year drought, Davenport is finding a new way to put its wastewater to use.

Davenport County Sanitation District unveiled Thursday its new nearly 3-million-gallon recycled water retention pond, a major component of a new recycled water project. Prior to the 2010 closure of Davenport’s cement plant, the sanitation district sent all of its treated effluent to cooling towers, said Santa Cruz County Assistant Director of Public Works Kent Edler. Then, it moved to spreading the water out over nearby fields — a poor solution during the winter, when rain-saturated ground forced the water to run off the land. After eight years and nearly $5 million in grants, a new option has come online.

Santa Cruz County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty, who represents the 3rd District and Davenport, described Thursday the effort as a “huge win-win-win for this community,” noting that the town of Davenport, comprised of some 120 households, already pays some of the highest sewage charges in the county. Customers are charged some $2,300 in sewer service fees annually, in addition to nearly $1,700 in annual water fees.

The Davenport County Sanitation District's new recycled water rentention pond will allow storage of as much as nearly 3 million gallons of water on site. (Jessica A. York -- Santa Cruz Sentinel)

A $4.8 million upgrade for Davenport's recycled water plant, including a new rentention pond, will allow the purified water to be sold for agricultural irrigation purposes. (Jessica A. York -- Santa Cruz Sentinel)

Using state and federal grants, the Davenport County Sanitation District upgraded its recycled water facility and water treatment plant to automatically switch off water flow in case of emergencies that could otherwise pump out overflow untreated water. (Jessica A. York -- Santa Cruz Sentinel)

“This is a small community that, because of state mandates, would have had to pay for this and it would have been thousands and thousands of dollars for every resident up here, on top of already high water and sewer bills,” Coonerty said during a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The project, located off Cement Plant Road, was made possible with some $4.8 million in grants from a combination of state Housing and Community Development Block Grant, state Water Resources Control Board and U.S. Department of Water Resources. In addition to environmental works, permits, planning and design, the construction project alone cost some $3.6 million.

“It’s also a win for the farmers, because the water that’s being collected here can be used and can be a sustainable, reliable water source up here on the North Coast, which is increasingly, with climate change not something that we can always rely on,” Coonerty said. “Agriculture up here and in our county is an essential industry and it’s really important we provide them with the tools that they need.”

Davenport, founded to house Cemex plant workers in 1905, has faced challenges in maintaining a secure water supply in recent years, relying primarily on the San Vicente and Mill creeks. When the district sells the treated water it can now store in bulk for irrigation purposes, the new revenue will help offset customers sewage bill costs, said Edler.

“It’s becoming more and more common as water issues become more prevalent,” Edler said of recycled water plants. “We were just spraying it on fields and nobody was really using it, so we were essentially wasting the water. It’s kind of the wave of the future.”

In addition to creating new storage for the treated water on land owned by the Trust for Public Land, the recycled water project included installation of a pipe connecting to neighboring farmland, dredging of the existing wastewater treatment pond and emergency shutoff features at the sanitation plant to prevent effluent overflow and contamination to the nearby Monterey Bay.

Davenport resident Ken Fein said residents knew they had a problems with a pond that was “rapidly filling up with solids” and no place to send it. He congratulated officials on an ambitious project in the works since 2011 and said he is looking forward to the opening in coming months of a refill station for residents to pull up to directly for treated water. Without efforts to secure grant funding, such a project divided among slightly more than 100 households would have cost something like $44,000 per customer, Fein estimated.